The Berlin Quintet

An Ungentlemanly War

The Surgeon's Tale

13

FEB/13

Inspecter Dietrich came to Spandau with the files of various unsolved murders for The Agents and hoped to tie these murders to Sergeant Kramer. Unfortunately, there was nothing in it to link with the mad sergeant but a pattern began to emerge of a disturbing series of murders with organs, muscle tissue, and other body parts being surgically excised and the victims being left in eerily comfortable positions. Dietrich said that they were classified as an unsolved cannibalism case. Asking for more information on similar crimes, The agents had Dietrich return with more information and they soon discovered a series of about forty murders, taking place between 1929 and 1935 and then resuming from 1945 to the present day. Sinclair grew more and more obsessed with the murders, becoming consumed with hatred for this murderer but determined that while the victims were found scattered around Berlin, they all lived within a certain area.

A few days later Dietrich called in late at night that and reported that there had been a similar attack. The agents went and found Dietrich but couldn’t get access to the crime scene or the victim whose arm was in the middle of being amputated when she managed to alert police with her screams. Dietrich did manage to secure the weapon for the agents to examine. Ir was a Great War era scalpel. When Dietrich went to return it to the appropriate authorities, he didn’t return. so the agents searched for him before Sally noticed that one of the cat walks was still vibrating and scurried up to the top of the building overlooking the crime scene and the crowd that was surrounding it.

On top, she found Dietrich in an undignified heap, still alive but knocked out. A shadowy figure was climbing down the other side of the building but as she called out to it, the figure jumped from one building to the next, their arms impossibly distended. Sally fired at it and struck the suspicious figure with a bullet, slowing it down but not stopping it as it headed off in the direction of that small radius that Sinclair had worked out. Making her way back to the other agents, she explained what she saw and how the scalpel was now missing. Getting in their car, the agents sped over to where they thought the attacker might be returning.

Sure enough, close to the centre of Sinclair’s radius, they found a tall apartment building which seemed perfect for a sinister, brachiating murderer. Making their way up the stairs, they found that the final two floors had been condemned and closed to the public. Not ones to allow any signage to throw them off their pursuit, they went past the decrepit, worn down penultimate floor and up to the very top floor where music could be heard. Besson waited outside the door with his gun ready and Sinclair and Sally went down into the dilapidated floor and over to the fire escape to surprise their presumed quarry. As they climbed up the side of the building, they felt the structure vibrate and looked down to see something scuttling up towards them, seemingly unaware of their presence. Making their way into the darkened apartment, they let Luc in and waited for their prey to arrive.

It slid in through the open window and into the darkened room before realizing it was not alone. The agents fired upon it, trying to keep it from getting away. In a pitiful squeal it surrendered and they soon had to come to grips with what they were facing. Its face was horribly distorted and distended, with bones jutting out from patchwork skin stretched tight across its misshapen skull. It spoke in a male voice but through a mouth of mismatched teeth, not all of it human. As he spoke, he tried to explain that he was sick and didn’t mean to hurt anyone but needed to stay alive. Sinclair, unable to control his rage, and despite the best efforts of Sally and Luc to stop him, managed to shoot him through the chest. As Sally tackled the monstrous man to the ground, she could hear two sets of heart beats until it was reduced to just one, Sinclair’s shot having hit its mark but failing to take into account a back up.

Soon he explained that he was known as Herr Chirurg, The Surgeon and that not only was he responsible for the murders but that he was also an agent of the Americans during the war as part of a secret mission called Operation Terrarium. He also pointed out that Sally was suffering from internal bleeding but she didn’t seem interested in hearing about that. The agents decided to take him back to Spandau and decide what to do with him there. Searching him and his apartment, they discovered a suitcase full of carefully arranged surgical implements and a box containing a US passport, American Dollars, and a coded telegraph.

Back at Spandau, they learned more from the Surgeon about how he had no memory prior to 1935 and how he had been hired by the Americans to spy on the Nazis before being assigned to work with Dr. Mengele in the camps, helping the evil doctor with his sinister experiments. Sally became overwrought, especially whenever the Surgeon would remind everyone of his American patronage and in a fit of rage, attacked him with a gardening spade that Speer used in his prison garden. The other agents called the guards who quickly escorted the Surgeon to a cell and Sally, who was by this time coughing up blood, off to the infirmary.

Luc and Sinclair explained to Speer what all had transpired, leaving out the Surgeon’s US connections. Speer allowed as having someone with knowledge of Mengele’s experiments and possibly even his whereabouts was too valuable to let go, agreed that the Surgeon should remain indefinitely contained in Spandau. The agents eventually met up with Sally in her post-surgical room and awkwardly tried to figure out just where to go from here, their by the book, black and white viewpoints being challenged at every step it seemed.

Meanwhile, in his cell, the Surgeon coughed up a needle and a length of thread and began to sew himself up, very optimistic about his new surroundings…